1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the use of software agents (Agents) in data processing systems to create and manage associations or links among devices, objects, attributes, or actions; and more particularly, to attaching to an object that is routed to an Agent for processing a record of what the Agent automatically did with the object on behalf of the owner of the Agent in accordance with rules provided by the owner to the Agent.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The office environment has witnessed a quiet technological revolution. Personal computers (PCs), facsimile (fax) machines, voice mail, electronic mail (e-mail), conferencing, desktop publishing, and other tools have changed the workplace forever. As data and devices proliferate, tasks like organizing information, locating files, and securing enough disk space gets increasingly difficult. Users performing routine office tasks are forced to search for data objects and information associated with a given action.
Various desktop management techniques have evolved in the form of software agents ("Agents") to address the association of actions with objects. These software Agents may be used to filter information and prioritize messages, create and distribute business forms, and make videos of screen activities for training and presentations. These software Agents attempt to replicate the actions of people doing information delivery tasks. The software Agents, acting on behalf of the user, execute application workflows and interact with computer applications and phone and fax resources to perform transactions typically requiring human intervention.
Still other desktop management techniques have employed the concepts of user control linking (e.g., Object Linking & Embedding (OLE), Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)). These techniques allow the user to pass data represented by a control to other applications that are invoked via a linking program controlling linking, to integrate at execution time applications that are totally unaware of each other.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,423,043, issued Jun. 6, 1995 to Fitzpatrick et al. and assigned to the assignee of this application, describes a procedure for managing the creation and monitoring of an arbitrary number of devices, objects, attributes, or actions on a computer's desktop.
It describes a method and apparatus to associate actions, attributes, objects, or devices on a computer desktop to reduce multiple manual processes. A media association Agent is provided to monitor, build, maintain, and recall links based on prior actions and user choices. The media association Agent exists within a data processing system as a background or windowed activity, and implemented in one embodiment as a terminate-and-stay-resident (TSR) process. Devices, attributes, objects, and actions are registered by the media association Agent and stored in non-volatile storage. Associations are then built by links among the entities registered with the media association Agent. These links take the form of entries in relational database tables, entries in flat files, linked lists, sets of pointers, etc. The groups of links are assigned unique identifiers for internal use by the media association Agent.
The media association Agent may act continuously to record actions and build links passively or on demand based on user specific user signals such as a trigger.
This U.S. Pat. No. 5,423,043 is hereby incorporated herein by reference as if it were set forth herein in its entirety.
The use of media association Agents and rules for screening and routine handling of objects, for example with e-mail, is becoming more and more prevalent. There has, however, been some reluctance on the part of individuals to incorporate this advanced technology. One of the reasons is that it becomes difficult for a user to remember what he or she told the Agent or rules to do.
cc:Mail from Lotus does have rules based processing for its subscribers' mail. Notification of this rules processing can be sent to the subscribers' display. This has the limitation that only activities that are performed for the subscriber while they are connected to the cc:Mail service are seen. Therefore, a subscriber to cc:Mail will have to retain this information in their head. A further shortcoming of cc:Mail is that if a mail item is handled by cc:Mail for a subscriber while the subscriber is not attached to the server, the subscriber never knows that something was done on their behalf to the mail.
IntelliAgent, marketed by IBM as a standalone tool, solves the problem of a subscriber having to remember what was done to their mail by providing an Activity Log. Any actions that the IntelliAgent performs are logged. The shortcoming here is that an individual would have to bring up the log to determine what actions IntelliAgent had performed on a mail message for them (so they would not potentially duplicate any actions).
Accordingly, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide an improved method and means for obviating the need for a user to remember the rules provided to his Agent or the actions taken by the Agent during processing of an object on behalf of the user.